Let me introduce Honey, the Quinta’s newest dog …. yes, another one! We’re a bit of a soft touch when it comes to animals and people around here know it, so we weren’t surprised when Zé Manuel popped over a week or so ago with this bundle of fun, but we set our hearts to stone and refused his “gift” ….. until the children saw her! Zé Manuel is actually one of our local bee-keepers and the one who runs the Quinta’s bee hives now that I no longer do it myself, so what with that and the puppy’s colouration, you can see how she got her name!

We´ve recently had just the weather that you don’t want when you have to take your roof off – which is what we’ve been doing – but it’s nice to see the lake going up and I think it’s risen about a meter during the last two weeks. Anyway, the lack of light hasn’t made me want to take many pictures recently, but I thought I’d share these four.
The above because I’ve had many requests to show how Meiktila is growing up …. you can see he’s full of beans and with the “Cortes Pereiras Nose”!
These next two are of some Green Woodpeckers we found prospecting nest sites down in the Algarve one day. Speaking of nesting, our migration has started with large “flocks” of storks cruising through and last week I saw our first Swallows and House Martins back again.

Just before Christmas we found a puppy lost in the middle of nowhere – the lucky thing! After enquiries we also found the owner, Zé da Choça, one of our neighbours up the track, but he had five others and thought it was a good idea we kept it – so now we’re up to four dogs again!